I put $50 towards my PS4 yesterday. I'm really looking forward to a couple of things on it, such as The Witness. I think the only game I saw announced for Xbox One that I'm disappointed in missing out on is Sunset Overdrive.

Aside from potential co-op, I don't see anything in that video I'm not getting from Mirror's Edge or inFamous, to be honest. Nice art style, though. If it plays as well as it moves here, that's a different matter, but i have my doubts.

Xbox One is back in the game, although this article has very valid points. It just stuns me how INCREDIBLY BADLY Microsoft sold these things to the audience? I mean, did they think nobody would notice? And object? Just take in the usual E3 hype-bullshit and gloss over the DRM/restriction stuff? There should have been good, direct canned replies to all of this stuff pre-empting the doubts of the mostly super conservative gamer community, instead of the "uh err go buy X360" shit. They should've been addressed, explained away and explained again. Whoever it was that did the final PR decisions here dropped the ball in a fucking massive way.

This complete reversal makes me a bit sad. When buying media I'm a 21st century digital boy, and I'd be tickled pink if I didn't have to ever see another optical disc fucking ever. What made me finally flip over was #1 most hated old industry shit, region restrictions - without them I would've been in a waiting mode to see if the video services were at all relevant to me. I'm very sad to see the family sharing feature go, but hopefully it will be reinstated in some form, and the digital sales of games keep expanding aggressively.

I did feel as though Microsoft, with all their ridiculous rules and regulations, were trying - badly - to solve a problem they won't really have for another generation: How do you make things fair AND somewhat curb piracy in an all-digital game market. It's almost admirable, except that their conclusions were wrong and it was too early for it. I predict that next generation, all consoles will feature similar features and restrictions. I'm inclined to say that they might all be discless by then as well.

This complete reversal makes me a bit sad. When buying media I'm a 21st century digital boy, and I'd be tickled pink if I didn't have to ever see another optical disc fucking ever. What made me finally flip over was #1 most hated old industry shit, region restrictions - without them I would've been in a waiting mode to see if the video services were at all relevant to me. I'm very sad to see the family sharing feature go, but hopefully it will be reinstated in some form, and the digital sales of games keep expanding aggressively.

The Xbox One Just Got Way Worse, And It's Our Fault

So much of this article is such absolute bullshit. Online publisher hubs for game resale was never on the table. The whole 'publishers can opt in to allowing their games to be resold with approved resellers' thing was a sop to GameStop, not an offer for publishers to set up their own stores within Xbox LIVE. Cheaper games? Also never going to happen. Digital prices would always be the same as physical prices, and Microsoft has a pretty strict pricing tier system for digital sales on Xbox LIVE (even for XBLA titles) and that's not going to go anywhere with Xbox One. Steam Sale type bargains are never going to happen on Xbox One because the Xbox Division is still being run by old guard executives who can't wrap their heads around the metrics that Valve periodically releases because it goes against what they learned in business school.

And pointing to Blizzard and World of Warcraft and saying 'see, it just works and nobody complains' is pants on head retarded. Does the author not remember Diablo III's Error 37? That's the kind of thing that people are justifiably afraid of and angry about when an 'always on' or even 'once every 24 hours on' requirement is mentioned. That a company that has been successfully running an MMO for years and still couldn't handle the kind of server traffic that their latest game generated. And there are millions more people who play console games than play Diablo.

Yeah, if only there had been some sort of a fair digital distribution scheme included there, I'd have already robbed a bank and would be futilely throwing money at the Microsoft office building. Times, they are a-changing, but unfortunately both the gaming community and the distribution business is still somewhat conservative - and of course in the stranglehold of Walmart chain store bullshit... Microsoft's proposed system was neither here or there properly, looked like to me...

New consoles need early adopter support to build that crucial word of mouth, and as much as it seems like it was just the 'Internet trolls' criticising the XBox One the objections ran far further and deeper than a few games sites. Hell, they were even talking it down on the BBC news. Surveys on gaming sites showed a near 9 to 1 swing in favour of PS4. Pre-order figures were apparently not looking good.

What MS were trying here was a shift to how a fully digital download only console will work, whilst at the same time trying to keep support for the current disc based model. And trying to be both what went before and what is coming in the future is tricky.

Complaints that 'it was just going to be like Steam and people are fine with that' forget that the people that are fine with Steam are people who aren't the main target audience for console gaming. The last few weeks have made it pretty clear that the console buying masses weren't cool with losing the ability to trade discs. The big PC gaming sites have been rightly chuckling about all this, but it really is true that the bulk of console gamers don't game on the PC and so haven't been exposed to the Steam model to see it's benefits.

The games consoles sold themselves in the past 20 years on being simple plug and play devices that didn't need much technical expertise to use. They are, at heart, complex toys. Trying to take a games console this far into the PC space as regards downloading content etc... turns out to be too much too soon. The market isn't quite ready for it yet in this space, the consoles will be the LAST entertainment form to go fully digital I feel.

But think about it this way. If they can change these policies so quickly at this point, then clearly none of it was going to be down to anything in the hardware. And software is easy to change, so once they've got past the launch window and that early critical early adoption phase, they can cheerfully start putting things back. For example, the sharing thing could be added back by saying something like 'if you want to do this, then you need to sign in ever 24 hours'. Make it optional, not mandatory. Give people a choice how they want to consume, don't dictate.

"But think about it this way. If they can change these policies so quickly at this point, then clearly none of it was going to be down to anything in the hardware. And software is easy to change, so once they've got past the launch window and that early critical early adoption phase, they can cheerfully start putting things back. For example, the sharing thing could be added back by saying something like 'if you want to do this, then you need to sign in ever 24 hours'. Make it optional, not mandatory. Give people a choice how they want to consume, don't dictate."

Indeed, this is what I'm counting on will happen, and in a bit more sane way. I'm just marvelling at the level of PR fail here, even from purely professional reasons. I mean... I really can't believe nobody predicted these objections and came up with a proper crib sheet of direct answers - or that if someone did, the list wasn't utilised. Instead, a purely empty E3 bullshit hype session that felt incredibly empty from the gamer/consumer point of view. Someone in a boardroom accepted that, feels like...

But yeah, I'm looking forward to the lending and other such systems being reinstated at a later date...

Okay, I think this is the best write-up of this so far, although the Steam lending is apparently on its way.

"Here's the problem: Microsoft didn't do any of those things. Any of these benefits remained "imagined," while the benefits that were actually announced were weak tea. Microsoft's "easier roaming" by downloading your games at a friend's house wasn't easier at all—these remote downloads would have actually been much less convenient than just bringing along a disc. The 10-member "family sharing" plan sounded intriguing, but Microsoft couldn't answer extremely basic questions about how it worked. Could two people play two different shared games in your library at the same time? No one at Microsoft seemed willing to say! Being able to play your entire library on your hard drive without having to get up and switch discs is nice, but it's hardly a "killer app" given the drawbacks."

BroForce is pretty damn awesome all around. It's been a while since I last looked, so time to download the new demo and see what's been changed. :)

-edit- Just completed the demo. Wow, this game has come along nicely! Seriously fun run & gun action with giant kabooms! and lots of pixel-blood from exploded enemies splattering everywhere! There's a nice difficulty curve too, so it's worth sticking with it if it seems too easy at the start.

Tangiers is a dark, surreal game – a love letter to the avant-garde of 20th century. It’s a world built from the broken prose of Burroughs, from the social dystopic brought about by Ballard’s architecture. Looking at the Dadaists playing with the absurd, the grotesque, the playful – at Throbbing Gristle teasing the edge of public decency with homemade tape loops. Exploring the dark, ambient textures of Oophoi, of David Lynch, the contradiction in finding solitude in violent strokes of light and shadow. The uncivilized, primitive dance of Artaud.